Contest Winner #2
June 16th, 2008
The winner for this weeks contest is Michelle. She was the lucky number when I did the random draw.
Don’t forget to leave a comment on Sunday’s budget for an extra chance to win if I miss my budget this week (hopefully I won’t miss it by 5 cents this time).
Posted in News/Misc | 1 Comment
Contest Winner
June 9th, 2008
The winner for this weeks contest is Kris. He was the lucky number when I did the random draw.
Don’t forget to leave a comment on Sunday’s budget for an extra chance to win if I miss my budget this week (though I’m doing good so far).
Posted in News/Misc | 1 Comment
Absentmindedness cost me my Budget
June 4th, 2008
I managed to blow my budget and the contest only two days into to the week. The worst part is that it was nothing to do with unplanned spending or splurging. Yesterday on my way home from work I was in the mood for a beer so I stopped at the store and decided to buy a case for the rest of the week. I found one I liked and checked the price, $24, thinking I was going to be within my budget I was happy to make the purchase.
Unfortunately my brain decided to go on vacation because I hadn’t budgeted $25 like I thought in the store (and I had done last week), I only budgeted $20. So as a result of my absentmindedness my budget for the week has been blown. The worst part is had I remembered what I budgeted accurately I would have bought a smaller case.
Its official: On Monday, June 9th I’m going to announce the winner of this week’s gift certificate giveaway. Maybe next week I’ll remember what I budget on items.
Posted in News/Misc, Budgeting and Planning | 10 Comments
Happy Mothers Day!
May 11th, 2008
To all the mothers out there: we might not always say it but we appreciate everything that you have done for us and continue to do for us. My mother has been a great inspiration and a great sounding board for many of my crazy ideas (my wife gets many of those now). Thank you!
I am awestruck with the sheer selflessness and caring that mothers give as they go about taking care of their children. Every child should take this day and let their mother know how much they mean to them. Happy mothers day to every mother out there the world would be nothing without you.
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Weekly Review - April 27, 2008
April 29th, 2008
I know this posting is a few days late but the last couple weeks have been very crazy and hectic. We have made a house purchase and we’ve placed our house on the market. Unfortunately this involved a great deal of cleaning and organizing which has taken up most of our time. I haven’t been in front of the computer at home since the last weekly update. This also means I haven’t been following the PF world or the business world for that matter.
This is very exciting time for me since I’ve never purchased or sold a house before and I never realized how stressful it was. The cleaning and organizing have really helped make our place look a lot larger and I believe much more sellable. A great deal of effort goes into getting a home ready to be sold but we’re there and we have to maintain this level of tidiness. I’ll write my impression of the whole process once it’s all finalized.
There hasn’t been much else happening in my life since this house purchase and sale took over it and I think after this week everything should start falling back into some semblance of regularity. I’ll try to carve out some time to get a few posts together in the next day or two.
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A Possible House Purchase
April 24th, 2008
We have found a house that we like and we’ve placed an offer for; now its time for the making sure everything with the house is sound. After a few weeks of looking for a house we actually found one that we liked and wanted. We placed an offer on the house and after a little bit of negotiation our offer was accepted. Needless to say we want to make sure that everything is ok with the house before the deal is 100% done. The house inspection turned up a few things that will need to be looked at though other than the electrical system there’s nothing major wrong with the house.
Before anyone jumps on this we knew the wiring in the house would need to be replaced before we placed our offer. Other than this as a major expense everything else seems to be mostly in order. A lot of smaller to medium sized jobs over the next few years which will increase the value of the house. The only thing that remains is to make sure that there are no termites (the house is in a region that is known to have them even though the street we bought on is quiet). The whole point for us here is to make sure that we’re not buying a house with more problems than we’re ready to deal with. Some known issues that we’re planning for is one thing but to discover a massive problem such as a termite infestation would not be a pleasant surprise.
The expense of getting a house inspection in my opinion is totally worth it. And unless your uncle Bob is a real house inspector get a professional - they do this for a living and know what to look for. The report we’re getting for our $400 inspection will make sure we fix everything necessary to make the house safe and get a better insurance rate. Not to mention it minimizes the unpleasant surprises.
We’ll know the results of the termite inspection later today and by the end of the day we might have a finalized house deal. This is very exciting for me as its my first house purchase - I’ve learned a great deal about the process so far.
Posted in News/Misc, Real-Estate | 1 Comment
Weekly Review - April 20, 2008
April 21st, 2008
This past week was another incredibly busy one - our house
hunt continued which also meant that we’re starting to clean our place for sale
if we find a house we like. I’ve come up with a few observations about the
whole process: first off people can be real slobs. There were a couple places
that we went into that were not only untidy but they were down right filthy. To
top this off a lot of people seemed to not care about their homes. I
understand that you can get used to some things being broken but some of the
things I’m seeing are scary. Another thing I noticed in a couple of these
houses was the shoddy work of a general contractor. It was an obvious move to
hide other flaws and was just done poorly. If you’re going to do something do
it right or don’t do it at all.
I’m not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination but I do keep things
relatively tidy and organized. Since we are likely to find a place that we like
soon enough we will need to sell our existing one. This unfortunately means
cleaning and purging which I have been trying to do for a while with little
success. This has forced this to happen and has kept me practically off the
computer all week. The initial cleaning is done, now as long as the real estate
agent doesn’t suggest painting the walls I should be back to having some spare
time.
Other than the house hunt everything was pretty status quo this week. In
general everything has been good but busy.
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Weekly Review– April 13, 2008
April 14th, 2008
This past week has been a busy one mostly because of some personal stuff (birthdays and such). This didn’t leave me with as much time as I would have liked for keeping up to date with this site or any other side project. But I did manage to find a little time to finalize the new design. Rather than keep tweaking it to make everything perfect I’ve put it online and you can all see it now.
What do you all think of the design? Are there any issues that anyone can see? I know there are a few small tweaks that I’ll be putting into place to get everything just right but overall I’m pretty happy with it. Now its time to go back to concentrating on the writing and staying current with some of the sites I like to read.
In other news we’ve started the process of looking at another house – the market is pretty good for us right now. I expect the process will take some time to get what we want within our price range. My wife and I are taking this process slowly and I’ll write more about it in the next little while as things start to firm up a bit.
I’m looking forward to hearing some feedback about the site, I put a fair bit of effort to get it up and did everything myself.
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Weekly Review – April 6, 2008
April 7th, 2008
This past week was another busy one and a productive one from a work front. I have been making some progress on the sales side of my job while at the same time helping out from the actual work point of view. Unfortunately I ended up out of the office almost as much as I was in it which impacted everything else. It almost seemed like there wasn’t enough hours in the day.
I keep going back to the need to prioritize my time properly so that I can concentrate on the important things. The slight frustration in being able to keep things moving is wearing on me. I have made some progress on the updated look and feel for the site; I spent a bunch of time testing out the template. I’m almost ready to put it up even though there will be things that need to be fixed.
The snowflaking experiment got started this week, I haven’t made and additional snowflaking payments yet but I have kept track of all of my spending this week. I think the food expenses might end up being a bit lower than initially expected. But this might be balanced with an increase in gas spending. I think I’ll have a better idea next week.
Finally there was a fire in our condo building this past week and it really reminded me how sudden our lives can change. A simple accident can alter our lives suddenly forcing us to deal with the repercussions.
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Festivals and Carnivals this Week
April 3rd, 2008
This week I participated in a couple carnivals and they’re both up and in place. They’ve got a lot of great articles in them. Here they are:
Carnival of Personal Finance #146 – Hosted by Stocktradingtogo
Festival of Frugality #119 – hosted by Consumerism Commentary
Check them out they’ll keep you reading for a while!
Posted in News/Misc, Sites/Articles | No Comments
